Unofficial news and tips about Google

October 17, 2008

Google Chrome to Add Greasemonkey Support

A recent build of Chromium, the open source project behind Google Chrome, added support for user scripts. For now, the support is limited: Chromium reads the scripts from the hard-coded directory c:\scripts and it ignores the @include metadata which restricts scripts to one or more web addresses. To enable Greasemonkey support, you need to use the flag: --enable-greasemonkey, for example by appending it to the target of a shortcut.

I tested the Greasemonkey support with the old script Linkifier, which turns text URLs and email addresses into links.

In September, Google's Sundar Pichai said that Chrome will have an API for extensions. "We don't have that in the beta today, but we definitely plan an extension API. It is one of the things we will get to next." It seems that Google Chrome will provide native support for Greasemonkey scripts before releasing the API.

Tips: * to get early access to developer-oriented Google Chrome builds, subscribe to the Dev Channel and read the release notes.* the latest Chromium snapshots are available at the BuildBot site, but they don't support Google's auto-updater and they're less stable than the official releases. You only need to download the file chrome-win32.zip from the most recent folder.

Will someone please explain how exactly to use Chromium? I'm not really using Chrome for the stability, so if it crashes, I won't be too disappointed anyway. I just want to test the new features and be of even more help to Google while getting the new features first!

@dudtn:To install Chromium, you can go to this page, click on the most recent folder (it should be at the top) and download either mini_installer.exe (setup) or chrome-win32.zip (portable archive).

After running the setup or extracting the archive to a folder, make sure you have a shortcut to chrome.exe on the desktop. Right-click on the shortcut, select "Properties" and append to the "Target" field: --enable-greasemonkey

It should look like this:C:\Users\Dan\AppData\Local\Chromium\Application\chrome.exe --enable-greasemonkey(standard path in Windows Vista)

While i would love to try this, i might wait till it ages a little bit so we have full support for it.While admittedly the URL choosing (#include) not being present doesn't really matter with my user scripts, still...

Although, with user scripts up and running even now, it can be used to add your own styles. (global, but you could create a little checkbox that will dynamically add and remove it)

You guys can't even get a simple Gmail gadget right, how the hell do you expect us to believe you can get an entire browser or (shudder to think) an entire OPERATING SYSTEM right? Should we expect the same lame responsiveness to user complaints that we, or at least I personally, have seen, with your other stuff? Keep a bloggin bro! Great job Google! Sheesh.